Preventing energy supply shortages - ERELIA-GDF SUEZ helps local participants get their own financial stake in wind power projects

Year: 2010

Category: 4. Environment

Section: Energy / Greenhouse Gases (GHG)

Sector: Energie / Eau

Company size: PME with fewer than 100 employees

Country: France

Company: ERELIA-GDF SUEZ

Group: GDF SUEZ

Sales: 25,6 millions d

Country: France

Address: Les Jardins de Brabois II 3, Allée d’Enghien CS-50150
54602 Villers-les-Nancy

Effectif : 34

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ERELIA-GDF SUEZ helps local participants get their own financial stake in wind power projects

Background

A wind power project self-evidently relies on social acceptance within its territory, and calls for a certain degree of social fairness and a substantial mobilization of collective intelligence, in close cooperation with local groups and individuals. As a consequence, three kinds of solidarity need to be called into action: community and inter-community solidarity, solidarity with the land itself, and solidarity with the local population. Helping the local population gain a stake in financing the project clearly responds to this need.

Objective (s)

- To take part in a local dynamic
- To build alliances around a model project
- To answer the expectations of active groups and individuals within the territory
- To safeguard the long-term consequences of the project

Approach

ERELIA is intended to create a direct link between a territory and an industrial project, by offering the option of making a financial investment in the project.
- Through a company created specifically for this purpose that will hold stock in the project, the amounts contributed (in cash) by local actors generate income at a rate that is known in advance, as a function of the project’s economics.
- To date, this approach has been applied in three cases, where nearly 300 members of the local population have provided financial support for ERELIA projects.

Project	Stake held by local participants in project company’s capital, in %	Number of shareholders
Hauts des Ailes	5%	98
Hauts des Ailes extension	5%	80
Mont de Bezard	5%	84

- This type of operation furthermore makes it necessary to produce an accounting at the annual shareholders’ meeting of the local participants’ company.
- Finally, it should be noted that Erelia has committed to take this approach in all of its new projects.
- Having local participants acquire a stake in wind power projects has strong appeal in building local acceptance. It helps make sense of an industrial project.